The tracking of objects in computer systems can involve very complex processes. The processes are complex because the number of objects may be in the thousands, the objects may be distributed across many different computer systems, and the objects may frequently change states. For example, a distributed system to control the various systems in a large building may include hundreds of computers. These computers may control the lighting systems, the heating systems, the elevators, and various electronic systems (e.g., a television and a laserdisc player). The distributed system may instantiate an object for each of the devices that can be controlled or that can receive input or output. For example, an object may be instantiated for each light that can be separately controlled, and an object may be instantiated for each light switch. The number of such devices in a large building can be very large.
Such large distributed systems need to ensure that they can function even when portions of the system fail or go off-line for maintenance. For example, when one object goes down because of a failure of one computer, the objects that reference that failed object should not also fail. In addition, when the failed object eventually comes up, the objects that reference that failed object should be able to continue to access the object. This tracking of objects as they go down and come up can be very complex. For example, in a large distributed system, there may be no guarantee that messages relating to when an object comes up or goes down are received in the order in which they are generated or even received at all. Thus, applications accessing the objects need to perform these complex processes to ensure that references are current. Current object models, however, provide very little support for tracking objects in such complex systems.
Current object models, such as Microsoft's Component Object Model (“COM”), facilitate the implementing of complex systems that may use hundreds or thousands of objects. COM is more fully described in “Inside COM” by Dale Rogerson and published by Microsoft Press in 1997. COM specifies that each object is to implement a certain interface referred to as the IUknown interface. An interface is a collection of functions that all are generally semantically related. The IUnknown interface provides a query interface function, an add reference function, and a release function. The query interface function is passed the identifier of an interface and returns a reference to that interface. The add reference and the release functions are used for reference counting the object. Each object that conforms to COM implements the IUknown interface.
A client that requests to instantiate a COM object may receive a pointer to the IUknown interface in return. The client may then invoke the query interface function passing the identifier of another interface supported by that COM object. The query interface function returns a pointer to the requested interface. The client can then use the pointer to invoke one of the functions of the requested interface. Each interface of a COM object inherits the IUknown interface. Thus, each of these interfaces provide access to other interfaces and provides reference counting. Whenever a client duplicates a pointer to an interface of a COM object, the client is expected to invoke the add reference function, which increments the reference count to that COM object. Whenever the client no longer needs a pointer to an interface of a COM object, the client is expected to invoke the release function, which decrements the reference count to that COM object and destructs the COM object when the reference count goes to 0.